


The Singles Cruise

by abigailnicole



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Cruise Ship, F/M, Singles cruise AU, everyone is bros AU, millennial AU, poor ideas AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-16
Updated: 2019-01-16
Packaged: 2019-10-11 09:29:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 20,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17444282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/abigailnicole/pseuds/abigailnicole
Summary: Going on a singles cruise to help a heartbroken Poe Dameron drink out his misery seemed like a good idea to Finn and Kylo. Seemed being the optimal word.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Im_All_Teeth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Im_All_Teeth/gifts).



> the prompt was: "we both decided to go on this singles cruise with our friends and now our friends have hooked up do you want to go to the buffet together AU"

It’s been five days into this ill-advised singles cruise and Kylo has regretted every second of it. So what if it was supposed to be Poe’s bachelor party (scheduled shortly before his disastrous breakup) where he agreed to come to this damn thing. So what if the bastard Dameron had bankrolled his former-groomsmen into coming with them, drawing him in with unlimited drinks and Facebook pictures promising overaccomplished young women willing to shell out $1500 to meet a man who could afford to do the same. So what if both Poe and Finn had fallen into bed with at least two women each so far, and—this was the sore point—career women who seemed to be more than just sorority girls on their father’s dime. Kylo did not care. He was Not Interested. No matter his own vague disinterest in most women, who seemed to him inhumanly interested in total frivolity and lacking in any philosophical insight. He’d watched girls lounging by the pool, reading mostly their phones, taking selfies—the heaviest tome he’d seen was a romance novel. He’d taken away from his sabbatical for this?

He’d turned instead to drinking heavily, sitting at the bar while Finn and Poe played pool volleyball with girls in skimpy bikinis, with men who loved to parade about shirtless and had chins you could cut granite with. He drank all the Manhattans Dameron was willing to pay for, but his only joy on this trip was his greatest weakness, one Dameron shared with him—gambling. Once those two were done with their foolish girls, once the liquid fire of a few amber cocktails were in his blood, he took the arm of his friends and together they descended into the belly of the ship, to the poker tables, where they formed an unstoppable force. 

At least at night. Kylo feigned indifference to how much he’d won but knew he’d more than made up for the money Dameron had spent on his booze and fare (and he was making sure the booze tab was substantial). During the day he went to the gym, watched hysterical karaoke with bikini’d beauties from afar, and eventually retreated to a leather-bound booth in the deck bar, where he whiled away the afternoon in his books. 

He first noticed her then. 

She was, unlike everyone else on this ship, wearing a gray, long-sleeve sweater. In contrast to bikini girls who spent a long time trading makeup and discussing contouring over their front-facing cameras at the pool, she seemed to wear little makeup—enough that she looked tired, even on this nominal vacation. She had a book as well, something with no picture on the cover, sitting too far away from him for him to make it out. At least 400 pages. Probably some epic fantasy tome, he told himself, until his third drink of the afternoon. She sipped water, and ordered endless bowls of honeydew—nothing else. He watched her slowly devour an entire bowl of the finely-cut green melon, turning pages slowly. She had a notebook next to her, graph paper, and would stop occasionally to take notes. 

“I think the singles cruise must be working,” someone said, close by his ear, and he startled looked up at Poe, who was leaning on the edge of the booth with a smug look on his face. “You’ve been staring at one girl for what, fifteen minutes? I have never seen anyone so fascinated by someone eating a melon. At least, actually eating a melon and not,” he grinned, “you know, eating a melon.” 

Kylo rolled his eyes. “I was lost in thought,” he said, annoyed. “I was just staring into space. I didn’t even know I was looking at her.” 

“Yes, likely story, very likely story,” Poe said, sliding into the booth next to him. “Bartender! One more of whatever the hell that is. Make it two. Make the second a double. And bring us some honeydew.” 

“How are the coeds,” Kylo asked, pushing his book to the edge of the table. 

“You’ll never believe the international lawyer I just met,” Poe said, taking a drink from Kylo’s cocktail. “Tits like a beachball. A man could bury his whole whole face in them.” 

“What stimulating conversation you must’ve had.” 

“Hmm, yes, very stimulating. The only bad thing about sexting,” Poe said, putting an elbow on the table to point at Kylo, “is that women are just not good at sex talk in real life. Who wants to check your phone for some scintillating messages when beachball tits lawyer is right in front of you?” 

“Her erudition does not extend to the bedroom?” Kylo asked, amused. 

Poe winked and picked up the double the bartender had set in front of him. “Let’s find out,” he said, before taking a large gulp. 

“That can’t be your only conquest of the day,” Kylo said. The bartender set the bowl of honeydew between them.

“I know your little voyeur heart is absolutely thrilled to be sharing a wall with me,” Poe said, putting a bite of melon in his mouth, “because I’m going to get fucked so hard you’ll probably wake up with a hard-on. And then, because of your grateful ex-groom of an asshole friend, you can come up to the bar and pick out any cute little thing you have your eye on.” 

“Yes, I’m sure,” Kylo said, rolling his eyes. 

Poe gave him a smile that had worked on every generation of beachball-tit lawyer the man had ever met. “One more thing,” he said. 

Kylo cocked an eyebrow. “Oh?” 

Poe grinned and left the booth. Kylo watched, speechless, as he took the drink he had ordered over to the girl in the gray sweater, setting it down in front of her notebook. The girl looked up. 

“My friend over there,” he said, loud enough for Kylo to hear, “is severely unfucked, and very not taking advantage of this singles cruise, and very willing to buy you a drink if you’ll just stop eating the damn honeydew.” 

“Is this supposed to be an example of successful wingmanning?” she asked, shutting her book. She looked over at Kylo, who suddenly had a very literal desire to hide under the table. He was afraid his face looked just as horrified as he felt. The girl looked at Kylo, looked at Poe, then shook her head the tiniest bit and gave a pitying smile. “Try again later, bro.”

She left the bar, leaving her honeydew still on the table. Poe turned to Kylo, shrugged, and took his drink back out to the pool. 

Later he saw her at the buffet, sitting with an earnest dark-haired girl who he swore had been playing volleyball with Finn earlier. “Come on Rey, you said you’d come with me and you’ve been nothing but a horrible stick in the mud,” the girl was saying. 

“Yes, it’s my specialty,” the girl, Rey, said. “Sticking. Mudding. Mudding around with the sticks." 

The girl sighed. “At least come to poker later!” 

Rey set down her glass of water. “Rose, last night you entered a literal wet t-shirt contest,” she said. 

“There was tequila,” Rose began. 

“You got second place,” Rey said. “In a wet t-shirt contest.”

“It was very good tequila,” Rose continued. 

“You told that boy you met yesterday he would never find another place as good as your thighs,” Rey said. 

“And truer words were never spoken,” Rose countered. “Just come to poker. It’ll be fun.” 

“Fun,” Rey said. 

Kylo turned his head to look at her face. He was surprised to see a slight smile. 

“You always win at poker,” Rose said. He couldn’t see the face of Rose, the friend, but some subtle quality changed on Rey’s face, like a light in the corner of a room had been turned on, throwing subtle shadows and beams across it. 

“All right,” Rey said, something unidentifiable in her tone. “Poker.” 

Kylo’s mouth felt dry. Suddenly his nightly poker games seemed much more interesting. 

 

—— 

 

No one played poker like the three of them. 

It was how they became friends, actually, back in college. Very unlikely that such an all-american jock, a frat party boy, and a brooding bookworm would ever become friends in the first place, until you throw in a Tau Phi Epsilon poker game and a $5000 grand prize. It was enough for Kylo to overcome his dislike of Fraternity Row, where the streets were always unidentifiably wet and too-identifiably odorous. It was enough for Finn to endanger his football scholarship, partly paid for by a religious organization who would not look kindly on his gambling. And for Poe Dameron, the rich-boy sponsor taking $10 off everyone at the door, it was a House Takes All guaranteed net positive to his bottom line, which was of course Tau Phi Epsilon’s bottom line, because if anything outweighed Dameron’s selfishness it was, oddly, a devotion to any group he was a member of (always a fatal flaw, in Kylo’s point of view). Finn, who had come from a past neither Kylo nor Poe pressed but which they knew involved a small town in the South and threats about lynching after he became too good at football, was never comfortable at large gatherings like these. If Dameron had any surprise at seeing Create-Your-Own-Major Kylo or Fifty-Yard-Field-Goal Finn at the party he kept it to himself and welcomed them both with open arms. 

“Just a bud light,” was Finn’s response when faced with Poe’s open bar. 

“Blanton’s,” Kylo said bluntly. “Two ice cubes.” 

“Simple men with classic tastes,” Poe said, pouring them at the same time, one in each hand. “Gentlemen, I’m so pleased you came out tonight. I’ve heard tale of you both, of course. If you’ll come with me.” 

He put them at two tables in the front of the room. It looked as if Poe’s then-girlfriend Phasma (soon to be fiancee, then ex-fiancee) had taken over the frat house. What was clearly normally a horrible room with beige carpets and scuffed-up walls, stacked with cardboard boxes and consistently picked-over couches, had been transformed (with Phasma’s typical rigorous style) as if someone had looked at “Casino Themed Party To Impress Your New Neighborhood Association? Your Complete Guide!” in Good Housekeeping and followed it to the letter. Years later Poe would confide in them both that Phasma had at that point (which was about two months into their relationship) spent a sickening amount of her family’s money on the thing. Subdued lighting hung in vertical cylinders over subdued half-circle tables with lit surfaces, raised edges. Towards the front of the room, where Poe brought Kylo and Finn to separate tables, hexagonal traditional poker tables with edged lighting for their green velvet surfaces stood clustered. Male players were asked to wear suits, which (being all college students), only Poe bothered to do. Finn wore his high school letterman, which he always wore, and Kylo wore black (which he also always wore). The female players, mostly supplied by Phasma’s own Kappa Eta Sigma, were asked to wear cocktail attire, and as sorority girls are wont to do when there is a dress code, followed it to the letter. 

“I’ve never seen so many slinky long dresses in my life,” Kylo muttered under his breath as Phasma, resplendent in a long silk dress that matched her blonde hair, brought him a refill on the whiskey with two ice cubes. 

“If only you’d bothered to join Tau Phi Epsilon,” she said frostily, smiling at him, before sweeping off to the next table. 

She was much warmer to Finn, touching his shoulder lightly and sitting next to him, smiling. Why she was so interested in recruiting for a fraternity she didn’t even belong to? The answer, of course, was revealed in the way she came to stand over Poe, placing a hand possessively on his shoulder, which he absently kissed while looking at his cards. The way she watched the people in the room watching Poe, the way her eyes flickered to the golden Tau Phi Epsilon symbols which she had clearly had made for the walls. Some desire to devote herself to some larger organization, to feed off and consolidate its power, to join in greatness and contribute to it. 

Power is just means to an end. Kylo finished his drink. 

At the end of the night they’ve won their respective brackets. The room looks hazier now, fumes of weed and cigarettes, the volume of the room increasing in the back as poker losers wash out and join their girlfriends or frat brothers at the craps tables. At the end of the night Finn, Poe, and Kylo are left facing each other at the last remaining hexagonal table, at the front of the room, farthest from the door. 

That night, Finn destroyed them both. 

The next week, it was Poe. 

The following week, it was Kylo. 

And so every week it started again. The stakes were never as high as the first night, when Finn walked out the door with his letterman jacket pockets stuffed with cash, but they were high enough. Eventually Poe would joke that it was the same $500, rotated back and forth between them, every week, but they kept playing. They kept playing weekly even into football season, when they’d have to rearrange the schedule for some horrible 5pm on a Wednesday night to correspond with Finn’s away games. They kept playing into Rush Week, when Poe had to sneak away from some asinine hazing ritual to meet them in the disused dorm room of Finn’s dorm neighbor, who had moved in with his off-campus girlfriend, and had to lie to his frat brothers about being so drunk he passed out in some random freshman’s dorm room. They kept it once a week when Kylo left the library at 2am, scribbling on some paper for that mysterious major of his, when he had to fly back between two conferences where he presented some kind of research, to “do laundry” and make it to weekly poker. 

And when Poe got his job at Phasma’s father’s corporation, with all the big bonuses that big military contracts get you, and he felt some obligation to drum up gratitude with an engagement ring, he took Finn and Kylo. They drank coffee outside the store while Poe made the final payment, Finn’s cafe au lait, Kylo’s triple espresso and Poe’s affogato, huddled in the too-bright January sun while Poe walked out with a too-bright, too-hard diamond on a pale gold band of the type Phasma preferred to wear. “What a waste of perfectly good poker money,” Finn said, shaking his head, but he smiled and clapped Poe on the back. “Congrats, man.” 

“May matrimony bring you all the bliss I’ve heard it can’t,” Kylo said. 

“With friends like you guys,” Poe said glumly. “Guess I’m really in it now, huh?” 

But he wasn’t, of course. And after the engagement, when Phasma became more and more militant, her emotions more and more brittle as friction between Poe and her father at the company grew, it was only to Finn and Kylo at weekly poker matches that he vented his frustrations. Kylo’s advice was conservative—don’t lose your job with the girl—but not so for Finn. “If you ever think about ending a relationship, just end it,” he said bluntly. “If you’re with the right girl, it’ll feel right. I knew every second, in mine.” 

“Your what now?” Kylo asked, setting a card on the table. “Your what relationship?” 

“Yeah, I had a girlfriend,” Finn said. Kylo and Poe exchanged glances. Poe raised his eyebrows slightly. “In high school. Maybe it was just high school love, who knows. We’d known each other our whole lives, and I finally asked her out. We dated for two years.” He fell silent, and the cards slowed while he stared at the table. “Every day of those two years, I was happy,” he said softly. “I never doubted her. I was stronger with her beside me, and I wanted to be her strength.” 

After a moment Poe cleared his throat. “So what, she, uh, fuck somebody else, or—how did this fairytale romance go awry?” 

“She died,” Finn said shortly. Kylo winced and Poe reached out a hand. 

“Hey, man, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that—“ Poe began. 

Finn shook his head. “I know you only know these sorority girls,” he said, smiling at Poe briefly. “Maybe it’s just different in a small town, I don’t know. Maybe she would have one day, you know? But I don’t really believe that. She died in a car wreck, on prom night, with her friends.” 

“Does this lovesick backstory explain why you refuse to give in to Phasma’s sorority schemings?” Kylo asked. Finn gave a nervous smile. 

“Nah, man, I don’t trust Phasma to set me up a hole in the ground,” he said bluntly. “If I wanted to end up with Martha Stewart sure. But I’ve just never met anyone else, and that’s all there is to it.”

“Well, I for one,” Poe said, resuming the game and setting down his seven of clubs, “am totally clueless as to how we could have been friends for—“ he checked his watch, for dramatic effect, “approximately five years, and this is the first time you have bothered mentioning to me that your high school girlfriend died?” 

Finn shrugged. All eyes turned to him as he laid down his hand— a royal flush. “Let’s just say,” he began, as he pulled the pile of money to his side of the table, “that I’m just better at keeping my cards close to my chest than you both.” 

“oh my god that was such a bad joke—“  
“I cannot believe you said that—"  
“what the fuck, man—” 

But the topic never came up again. 

\----

At least, not until Poe drunkenly texted them one Saturday night to say that he had broken it up with Phasma. 

The night started at Kylo’s favorite poorly-lit steakhouse across from his apartment building, with Poe stabbing his rare steak more times than was appropriate, and ended with Finn holding him up by the shoulders while Poe puked into a garbage can outside some downtown club, pretending like his tears were from vomiting. 

“How are you simultaneously vomiting, crying, and on Tinder,” Kylo asked, pulling a phone out of his friend’s hand. 

“You need a friendtervention,” Finn said, steering him away from the trash can and to a bench on the corner. “Seriously man.”

“Oh no,” Kylo said, in a tone that made Finn look up in alarm. Poe’s eyes couldn’t figure out what to focus on. “Oh no. Finn.” He held out the phone. “This is a shirtless gym selfie. First pic.” 

“Poe, man, first of all, you literally just broke it off with your fiancee, it is too soon for Tinder,” Finn began. “And secondly—why on earth would you lead with a shirtless gym selfie?” 

“It gets worse,” said Kylo, whose pale face was now illuminated by Poe’s phone, inches from his face. “She’s in this one.” 

“What the fuck,” Finn exclaimed as Poe tried to say “—pic—look good, good, good suit—“ 

“Oh no,” Kylo said, who had moved past the pics and was reading the bio now. “You can’t list The Hardy Boys as your favorite book, Poe.” 

“’S a joke,” he protested weakly. 

“It’s not funny,” Kylo said. 

None of them realized the bench they had been sitting at was a bus stop until the bus pulled up. The door opened and the driver, an exasperated woman in her 40s, looked down at the three young men. “Are you getting on?” she asked.

“Where does this go?” Finn asked. 

“Up towards Midtown,” she said promptly. 

“Uh, sure,” Finn said, and Kylo shrugged and helped him carry Poe onto the bus, slung between their shoulders. 

On the ride the streetlights and the rhythm of the tires on the road lulled Poe into sleep, slumped over, his face pressed into Kylo’s shoulder. 

“We have to fix this,” Kylo said, passing Poe’s phone to Finn. “Please, pick out some better photos.”

“I’m just gonna take the liberty of deleting these,” Finn said, scrolling through the camera roll, which had more of Phasma’s tits than he’d ever cared to see.

“You’re doing him a service,” Kylo said. He had also never thought much about Phasma’s breasts, and seeing them like that—with her drunken ex-fiance smelling of vomit leaning on his shoulder—took away any feelings except some small but deep pang of sadness. 

“What about this one?” Finn asked, holding up the phone with a cute picture of Poe and Porg, his mother’s dog. 

“Dog pics very safe for dating websites,” said Kylo, wrinkling his nose, a man who never pet a dog unless he couldn’t avoid it. “What about, I don’t know, rock climbing, or something?” 

By the time they got off the bus, two blocks away from Poe’s apartment, they had made him a whole new dating profile. They carried him between their shoulders up the half flight to the door, fumbled around in his pocket for the keys. Kylo and Finn set Poe on the floor, where he promptly fell sideways and started snoring. 

“Is he gonna die,” said Finn. “If we leave him here, I mean. Is he gonna do one of those things where he chokes on his own vomit and we wake up to a dead friend?” 

“Ugh,” said Kylo, who suddenly saw the future, and it involved spending a night in Poe’s apartment. “He’ll be…..fine.”

Finn and Kylo exchanged glances.

“Shotgun futon,” Kylo said immediately. 

“Shotgun blanket,” said Finn. 

“Done,” said Kylo.


	2. Chapter 2

“Kylo.” 

Kylo opened an eye. It was, against all reason, 8am. He squinted further. He was lying….on a futon. Another blink. That was…Poe’s futon. Deranged houseplant. Dying houseplant. Crinkled venetian blinds. Awkward art from kung fu movie Poe loved but Kylo had fallen asleep halfway through. Voice? 

“Kylo.” 

He turned his head to the side. On the floor were Poe & Finn. Finn was sprawled on his stomach, blanket covering his head to his knees, one shoe off. Poe was using his butt for a pillow. 

“Hmhfr?” Kylo tried. 

“What circle of hell is online dating,” Poe asked. 

Kylo groaned. “What are you doing on tinder at 8 in the morning,” he said. He reached for a blanket that, once it was in his hand, turned out to be Finn’s old letterman. He blinked, confused, then lay his head back. “What are you. Just, what.” 

“Newly single, baby,” Poe said, rolling over so his chin was resting on Finn’s butt. 

“You’re like, two clothing layers away from eating ass right now, bro.” 

Poe grinned and stuck out his tongue. Kylo groaned and pulled Finn’s letterman jacket up over his body. “Oh god.” 

“Listen to this: 26 year old looking for love in a time of crisis,” Poe said, holding up his phone. “Appreciates: margaritas, poetry. Does not appreciate: sass, backgammon.” 

“Love in a time of crisis? what kind of hot topic shit is that?” asked Kylo, a man who had owned more hot topic clothing than any human had a right to. 

“What do I even say to these girls?” Poe said. 

“Nothing,” Kylo said, removing the jacket from his face. “It’s 8am, Poe. Never text a woman before 11am.” 

“I used to text her all the time,” he said. 

“And that’s exactly what got you into this mess,” Kylo affirmed. 

Poe’s face brightened. “Oooh, this one loves dogs!” 

“Poeregard. Every girl on the internet loves dogs.”

“But this one,” Poe said, holding up his phone, “has seven rottweilers in her picture.”

“That is excessive and disgusting,” said Kylo, a man who hated dog slobber. 

“Dogs are cute,” said Poe. 

Kylo sighed. “Poe,” he said. “Poe. Do you want to know how to talk to girls on dating websites?”

“Is Chronically-Single Kylo trying to give me dating advice?” Poe asked, cocking an eyebrow in disbelief. 

“It is, in fact, my chronically single state that allows me to give you all the insights to the dating game, my friend,” Kylo said. He rolled over on one arm. “Do you want to end up in another long-term relationship? Poeregard, long-term relationships have been your life for years. Years. That is a TRAP. You do not want to be TRAPPED again. The whole point is that you are here to Play the Field. You are here to see Life Outside Of That Girl. Do Not Fall For Another One Of That Girl.” 

Poe rolled his eyes. “Did you two hijack my picture,” he said. 

“You’re welcome,” Kylo said. 

“Who wrote that my life is 'but a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing’?” 

Kylo groaned. “I told Finn not to write that. It just screams ‘newly single’.” 

“Now all these girls are up in my DMs like ‘omg I loooooove shakespeare’,” Poe said, scrolling furiously. “Kylo. I do not love shakesepeare.”

Kylo sighed again. “Okay Poe, advice time. Number one: none of these girls loooove shakespeare. They do not know shit about shakespeare. They think Romeo and Juliet, a play about two fourteen year olds who fuck and then kill themselves, is romantic, for godsakes. You do not have to prove yourself to them.” 

“What am I supposed to say to them, then?” Poe said, setting his phone down. 

Kylo reached across the edge of the futon to pick it up. His first attempt missed and patted Finn’s butt. Finn’s foot kicked and something under the blanket made a “hmmmgph” sound. 

“You make them prove themselves to you,” he said. “Be mean. Make somebody up their game. You can waste a lot of time being nice to randos on dating websites who will eventually disappoint you. Why waste that time? You want to date someone who impresses you. So start with that.” 

Finn’s head emerged from the edge of the blanket. “Is this some edge lord dating advice course?” he said. “What kind of nonsense is this?” 

Kylo ignored him. “If she doesn’t impress you now, why would you wait around to find out if she suddenly will?” 

“You are fucked up, man,” Finn said. “Girls are just people too. Are you on your game 100% of the time? Do you always have something witty to say? You never get tired, or bored, or need to just have an encouraging word of support?” 

“That, my friend,” Kylo said, pointing with Poe’s phone, “is not the point of online dating. Online dating is a game.” 

“Is it supposed to be a fun game?” Finn retorted. 

“Yes,” Kylo said, pointing again with the phone. “The lost art of conversation, my friend. Do you know why it’s a circle of Hell, Poergard?”

“Since when is my new nickname Poeregard,” Poe said. 

“It is a circle of Hell because it is full of inanity,” Kylo Ren said. “Asinine conversations. ‘What kind of dog do you like?’ ‘Do you like sports?’ ‘Oh I heard there’s a new brunch spot.’ Who!! Cares!!!” 

“This is rough,” Finn said, to Poe, pulling the blanket back up to his shoulders. 

“If you want brunch recommendations, go to Yelp. If you want to look at pictures of dogs, look at r/aww,” said Kylo. 

“Did you just put a subreddit into a sentence?” Poe asked. 

“If you want cutting conversation edged with sexual tension, you have to make it yourself,” Kylo said. “That is all. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.” He handed the phone back to Poe. 

“Okay so what do I say to this: I work in a laboratory studying the interaction of neutrophils and e. coli,” Poe said, his face inches away from the screen. 

“That is codeword for rimming,” said Kylo. 

“Ew,” said Finn. 

“Hot,” said Poe. 

“Ew,” said Kylo. 

“This girl says: I really like running,” Poe said, swiping across the screen. 

“Ask her for her favorite running spot,” suggested Finn. 

“Ask her what she’s running from,” said Kylo. 

“What the fuck is wrong with you,” Finn said. He rolled over, dislodging Poe’s face. “There’s a word for this, you know. It’s called negging,” he said, gesturing at Kylo. “Negging, Kylo, is a bad thing. Neg as in negative.” 

“Say whatever you want about me,” Kylo said. “If you’re here to bake cupcakes and be a ray of sunshine, whatever. I’m not here to date a pinterest mom. I want witty banter. I see your eye rolling, Finnegan, and I do not appreciate it.”

“Is this gonna be a thing now?” Finn asked Poe. “Finnegan?”

“Poeregard,” Poe said, sorrowfully. 

“I know what I want and I just want verbal sparring, and you cannot get it out of any other medium besides flirting.” 

“Maybe you’re just using meanness because your parents never demonstrated affection for you in a healthy way,” Finn said, exasperated. “Oh wait, was that too soon?” 

“If this is verbal sparring, I think you get that point,” Poe said. “Hey we’re all awake now????” 

“You woke me up by saying my name repeatedly,” Kylo said. 

“You kept touching my butt,” Finn said. 

“Great!” said Poe. “That means it’s brunch time!!!” 

“Poe, it is still 8am, and brunch does not start until 10am,” said Finn. 

“Brunch is a state of mind, bitch,” said Poe. 

“That feels suspiciously like sorority t-shirt word art,” said Kylo. Poe pulled the blanket off of Finn and grabbed the edge of Finn’s jacket, covering Kylo. 

“Bruuuuunch,” he whined, until finally he dragged bleary-eyed Kylo and Finn from the apartment. 

Brunch was four coffees and some burned toast at the unhip corner diner. Poe, who was in fact still somewhat drunk, threw up in the bathroom. Finn, who held his phone during the interlude, quietly deleted three missed calls from Phasma, then blocked her number. Six more notifications popped up from Tinder. 

“I am going home,” said Kylo. “I need to sleep in my actual bed. No more of this futon nonsense.” 

“Excuse me, mister Futon,” said Finn, raising an eyebrow. Kylo raised a coffee cup defensively. 

“Fine,” he said. 

“‘m okay,” Poe said, emerging from the bathroom, then fell into his chair. “Gentlemen,” he said, red-rimmed eyes staring over the top of a coffee cup, “I am now, unfortunately, no longer drunk.”

“Let’s go home,” Finn said. Kylo paid the tab and in exchange Finn dropped Poe off at his apartment. 

— 

There was radio silence from Poe for a week. The next week he showed up at poker night with three tickets for the singles cruise. 

— 

“Do you ever feel like this entire cruise is made of...shirtless gym selfies,” Kylo asked Finn, staring at the deck with disdain. Finn snorted into his drink. He had moved, over the years, from Bud Light to—at their insistence—a porter. It was an improvement. 

“Is that some twinge of jealousy I hear?” he asked, and Kylo scowled. 

“Some of us have more to us than our muscles,” he began, and Finn snorted again. Finn’s biceps had biceps. Kylo had watched him, earlier in the evening, pick up a girl and twirl her in the air. Kylo, who worked out the amount that a normal person worked out but also had not played college sports, had never lifted a woman over his head. 

“You keep telling yourself that,” Finn said. “But you know, if you’re going to use one of those PhD’s to pick up a girl, you better at least have a little game. You know,” he said, lifting his drink in the air, “game. Like, the ability to talk to a girl in the first place.”

“There aren’t that many PhD’s,” Kylo grumbled, but he scowled into his whiskey, not looking Finn in the face. “What about you? I thought you’d sworn off dating forever, or something.”

Finn’s smile faded. “It’s been eight years since she died,” he said. Kylo looked up, into Finn’s unwavering gaze. “I think about her all the time. But,” he shrugged. “I wouldn’t want her to give up on her dream of a family for me, if I had died.”

“Did you just admit that you had a dream of a... a family?” Kylo asked, as Finn took another swallow of a porter. 

“You know, Kylo,” Finn said, “I think domestic bliss is the one thing I cannot picture you doing.” 

“There has to be at least one more thing,” Kylo protested. “Just one. I can think of so many!” 

Finn laughed. “Game,” he said again to Kylo, setting his empty beer glass down on the bar. “Example.” 

Kylo watched glumly as he walked over to a girl on deck, who had taken a break from dancing and was standing off to one side, her face flushed from exertion. The space was too loud for Kylo to hear what Finn said, but the girl’s laughter carried above the music. It was, he noted suddenly, his vision sharper, Rose, that girl who had been sitting with Rey in the buffet that day. As she laughed, she put a hand on Finn’s bicep, and he ducked his head to be closer to hers. 

Kylo drained his whiskey and set the empty drink down on the bar. He scanned the crowd but that girl—Rey—her face was nowhere to be found. His stomach grumbled as the alcohol hit the empty lining. Oh, right, he thought. Cruise ships. Twenty four hour buffet. He left the deck without notice from Finn, who was by now leading Rose back onto the dance floor. 

Probably covered with norovirus. 

The twenty four hour buffet may indeed have been twenty four hours, but at eleven thirty at night the offerings were not what he wanted. He scowled at the six lines, three of which were closed. Endless salad and soup? Why was that even a buffet line? The hot food was down to chicken tenders and warmed over french fries, some questionable….pot roast, perhaps? Some strained vegetables. Strained, Kylo thought, looking at the soggy asparagus sitting in a pool of yellow water, was the right word for it. He filled a plate with chicken tenders when something on the salad bar caught his eye. Thick slices of honeydew. He stared at them for a good thirty seconds before he said, under his breath, “fuck it,” and put them in a bowl. Soft serve went on top. 

He had just barely had time to sit down when she walked in. 

The twenty four hour buffet was on the second level, just under the deck, and tables ringed the central buffet with windows offering a 180 degree view of the ocean below, glinting with moonlight on the calm seas. Kylo was seated directly opposite the double doors that led to the buffet, and as she came in he allowed himself a full view of her. She was wearing gray, again, this time some sort of grey wrap dress with soft shoes. She absently piled her plate high from the salad bar, shoved a bowl of yellow soup onto her plate. 

It was almost midnight. There was no one else in the dining room except a couple in the back obviously high, giggling to each other and feeding each other french fries. She turned around, holding her plate, and caught him staring at her. 

“Oh, it’s you,” she said. “The undersexed friend.” 

Kylo felt his face instantly turn red and inwardly cursed Poe to hell and back. 

“Would you like to sit down,” he managed, moving his plate of honeydew and soft serve to the side. Honeydew? Shit. 

To his surprise, she sat down opposite him, raising her eyes slightly as she took in the plate of honeydew but thankfully making no comment. 

“I’m Rey,” she said, reaching for a fork. 

“I’m Kylo,” he said. 

“I know,” she said, stabbing a grape tomato with the fork and popping it into her mouth. 

“You do?” he said. 

She nodded. “Your friend,” she said, swallowing the tomato, “has been relentlessly pursuing my friend. Rose. The one who brought me here.”

“You don’t seem terribly excited about that,” Kylo said. He broke a chicken tender in half with his fingers. 

“About your friend?”

“About being brought here.” 

She took another bite of salad and swallowed. “I could say the same for you, undersexed friend.” 

“That particular friend,” he said, dipping a piece of chicken in ranch dressing, “is fresh off a bad engagement. This was all his doing.” 

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Rey said automatically. 

“More like thank god,” Kylo said. “We were horribly relieved when they finally broke it off. She was the most militant woman. Not a chill bone in her body. None of us knew what he saw in her, honestly.” 

Rey choked on her salad a little as she pushed down a laugh. “Still,” she said, swallowing. “I’m sure he’s sad about it.” 

“Oh, sad isn’t the word I’d use for the multitudinious fucking he’s been doing on this ship,” Kylo said mildly. “He seems to be enjoying his freedom.” 

“Freedom, yes,” Rey said, as Kylo finally took a bite of his chicken. “Freedom from caring about someone, freedom from being cared about.” 

“Being cared about,” he said, “is often overrated.” 

“Now that’s quite the priveleged thing to say,” she said, reaching for a spoon and dipping it into the yellowing soup. “Where are you from, Kylo?” 

“And I was so excited here to have one conversation that didn’t begin with ‘so what do you do?’ with all the dollar signs attached. Must you ask?” 

Rey snorted again. “No, I musn’t,” she said. “I was making small talk. I honestly don’t care what you do.” 

“The truth at last,” Kylo said, taking another bite of chicken. He swallowed. “With girls like you, no wonder I remain the unfucked friend.” 

She hid a smile again. “Yes, girls like me,” she said. “What is this soup, do you think?” 

Kylo examined it. Some thick yellow liquid dripped off her spoon. He reached over and inserted a forefinger into the bowl, making her hide a small smile again as he licked the tip of the finger carefully. “Hmm,” he said. 

“Oh dear,” she said. “A ‘hmmmm’ soup is never a good sign.”

“Well, it’s definitely cream of something,” he said. 

“Cream of something, huh,” she said. “I’m guessing the culinary arts aren’t your passion.” 

“You found me out,” he said solemnly, licking the remaining cream soup off his finger. “What about you, Rey? What do you do?”

“This and that,” she said, setting the spoon back down to focus on the salad. “Must you ask?” 

“Then let’s agree not to,” Kylo said. He handed her a french fry. “Potato for soup?” 

“Do french fries really count as potatoes?” Rey asked, but took the french fry from his hand. 

“Why aren’t you out drinking tonight?” Kylo asked her, breaking another chicken tender in half. “I left my friend—Finn is his name, by the way—on the dance floor with your friend Rose.” 

“Yes, well, Rose is very excited to find a new man,” Rey said. “She just got hired, actually. This is sort of her celebration cruise. The first time she’s been away from her sister, starting a job in a new city.”

“Oh, good for her,” Kylo said, politely. “And may I ask what she does? Or are your friends as off-limits as your enigmatic self?” 

She hid another smile behind a bite of bread. “Enigmas all around,” she said. “Let’s avoid all that mundane real-world talk. Let’s pretend that we’re out her on the ocean, that all our real jobs have been nuked into oblivion, and now we’re destined to spend the rest of our days here.” 

“Will the buffet be this bad forever?” Kylo asked. 

She smiled again, more openly. 

“I sense you’re desparately in need of a vacation, to make such a horrible claim,” he said. “Trapped on a singles cruise forever? It’s like purgatory.”

“Your friend might disagree,” Rey said. 

“Oh yes, the friend fucking his way through a series of girls to forget his Amazonian ex-fiancee? If fucking a different woman every night to get the first one out of your head isn’t purgatory, what is?” 

“Which circle of hell was that, again,” Rey asked, ripping the bread to pieces, dipping one in the soup. 

“I think Virgil must have skipped that part,” Kylo said. 

“Too virginal, perhaps?” Rey asked, and Kylo actually put a hand to his face, shaking his head. 

“That was a truly awful pun,” he said. 

Rey took a bite of her bread, softened by the soup. She put another bite of salad into her mouth, studying Kylo. He looked away, out the window and into the ocean. The moon hung low and bright on the horizon, glinting off the waves. “Maybe being trapped out here wouldn’t be so awful,” Kylo relented. “As long as there’s wifi, anyway.”

Rey laughed again. “Okay, unfucked friend,” she began,

“Kylo, please,” he said. “This may surprise you, but I do not actually go by unfucked friend.”

“Kylo,” she corrected herself, still smiling. “Though still, I presume, unfucked.”

“My unwillingness to engage with the panting females on the dance floor is, and this may surprise you on this ship of semi-predators, a choice,” he said, rolling his eyes. 

“You go for more of what?” Rey asked, studying him with her head cocked slightly to the side. “The short cutesy Brooklyn girls?” 

Kylo, who had exclusively dated serious, tall, willowy blondes, snorted. 

“No,” he said shortly, putting more chicken tender into his mouth. He was acutely aware that the soft serve was beginning to melt. “Must you ask?” he said instead, which garnered another small smile from her. “And you, Rey, how many versions of my woebegone, just-freshly-single friend have you gone after?” 

“Oh, far too many,” she said. “They’re all terrible. All the same. How many times can you stand a man shouting another woman’s name in the night before you just swear off the whole species.” 

“And you couldn’t find yet a single one on this ship appealing?” Kylo asked. “I can hunt down Poe for you, if you like.”

“Is that your freshly single friend?” she asked, rhetorically. She finished her last bite of salad. “No, I’ve had my fill of careless, charismatic tricksters,” she said. “Why else would I sit next to such a lurking dark cloud as yourself?” 

“And here I was willing to set you up with my friend,” Kylo said. He was surprised to find that his pulse was racing, a little bit. The girl across from him was composed, calm, her eyes flickering across his face. In the moonlight her gray dress took on a sheen, gathered at the shoulders and throwing vertical shadows over her breasts. He hadn’t bothered talking to a woman outside his lab for this long in a while. 

Rey smiled again. “The one so willing to set me up with you?” she asked. “So charitable. I feel like a bundt cake, being passed back and forth at an auction.”

“Please don’t insult yourself,” Kylo said, his eyes meeting hers. He looked quite serious. “A Bundt cake? You’d at least be an angel food cake.” 

She laughed again. What the hell, he thought. Singles cruise? “Would you care for a drink?” he asked. 

She looked hesitant. “Don’t let me detain you,” he said, raising a hand, “if you have to rush back to Rose at the dance floor. Though I think she might make it to a very different cabin tonight.” 

Wordlessly, she picked up her spoon, and reached across the table for his bowl of honeydew. With careful, measured steps she reached down with the spoon, scooping up the soft vanilla and a bite of the green flesh. “But you haven’t finished your dessert,” she said. 

Kylo reached for his own spoon, brought it down to the dish. He was filled with a sudden urge to lick the ice cream out of her mouth. “How could I,” he said, his eyes on her as he took his own bite. 

She looked more flushed than she had a second ago. She took another bite, than another, in silence. 

“We don’t have to get the drink,” he said, sensing her growing discomfort.

“Maybe another night,” she said. She set the spoon down. “It’s been nice eating with you, Kylo.”

“Goodnight, Rey,” he said, as she stood up. 

“Goodnight,” she said, and turned away from the table. He watched her walk away. After the doors closed behind her, he ate every drop of melted ice cream and honey dew from the bowl.


	3. Chapter 3

Time seemed strangely compressed on this boat. Kylo has no idea how many nights it’s been. How many days were they at sea? Nothing but ocean for days. When he thinks back, the days run together, not because of alcohol—though the alcohol doesn’t help—but because the days seem so similar. Finn holding the hand of some adult woman wearing pigtails, Poe making out with a different tall blonde woman who could be Phasma, if you don’t look too hard. At 6am he was awoken by a rhythmic moaning through his cabin wall, and unpleasantly reminded that Poe’s bed is only one thin wall away from his own. He stuffed a pillow over his head but he can still hear the moaning, escalating on the other side of the textured plastic wall. He stared at the inside of the pillow, smelling his own hair and industrial laundry detergent, as Poe’s familiar voice blends with the moaning. There are distinct sounds of….was that spanking? Kylo put his hands over his ears, still holding the pillow tightly to his face. He’s dangerously close to being able to make out full words. 

“Fuck this,” he mumbled, and rolled out of bed. The noises were louder now—definitely spanking, and before he can finish putting on his shoes on he heard “oh I’m a bad girl—“ before he pulled on a black shirt and nearly sprinted out of his room, shoes still untied. You can hear the moaning three cabins down but by the fourth one the sounds were fading. Kylo mounted the steps to the deck above, through the carpeted lobby, strangely empty this time of morning. He left his phone in the cabin but a clock on the wall read ten till six in the morning. 

“Goddamn it, Poe,” he muttered again. He rubbed his eyes and walked the remaining set of stairs up to the deck. 

This early the deck was quiet, too. The ocean was still, quiet, with only a slight breeze which picks at his hair. He could feel the motion of the ship, faster than they go during the day. The sky was luminous pink, casting the deck in a warm, pastel glow, turning the white lounge chairs rosy with the sunrise. Even the pool was less vibrant turquoise than usual, the quietest he’s seen it in this ship full of coeds. 

And then she was there. 

He almost can’t believe it, in the quiet, warm light of the sunrise, the way she looked walking across the deck. She wore a bikini now, silver—he could have guessed—high necked, sporty, the fabric liquid over her body. He hadn’t realized that he’d ever thought about touching her body until in his mind, he caught himself thinking of the way her breasts would feel different through this tight lycra than the draping jersey of the dress she wore in the dining room. From where he stands he couldn't see her face, just the line of her shoulders, her surprisingly great posture. She walked square, unafraid toward the pool, pausing to drop a towel on a lounge chair. He walked down the deck silently as she tensed her shoulders, crouching, hands up, and swan-dived into the pool in one lithe, graceful motion. 

Her swimming was efficient, quick, her arms making long scythes through the water and back again. He walked down the deck, towards the pool, then stopped and turned back to the bar. There were no bartenders this time of day, but the champagne and orange juice were both visible in the glass-doored fridge behind the bar, and Kylo paused and then thought what the hell, it’s paid for anyway. He slipped behind the bar and poured two mimosas. 

When he stepped behind the bar she’s making another lap, back and forth. He set the mimosas on a side table, sat at the lounge chair next to her towel, watching her body move through the water with a flash of silver. In the pink light he lost track of how many laps she swam, only noticing when she switched strokes. He knew, at some point, that she becomes aware of his presence, because she paused at the end of the pool and made eye contact with him before diving under again. She didn't stop making her laps. 

He caught himself thinking, idly, about the water moving over her skin, the silky-soft flowing of water over the lines of her body, the way drops cling to her parted lips when she surfaces for air. Eventually her laps slowed, and after her final lap she laid back in the water, panting, face to the pink sky. There’s very little that’s secret about her body in the silver bikini, unlike the gray dress or the sweater of earlier, the line of her ribs under the swimsuit, the rise of her pelvic bone, the movements of her chest and belly as she panted. Her legs hung loose and free in the water, feet dangling at the ankles that seemed to him very small, like he could fit his entire hand around one. After a few minutes she rolled under the water, pulled her hair free of its bun and emerged from the pool, dripping, hair falling in a curtain behind her. 

“This is an unusual time for a drink,” she said. She’s was walking towards him now, her bare feet on the concrete, and in the low lounge chair his eyes were level with her navel. 

“I didn’t want you to think that was an empty threat,” he said. 

“Move over,” she said, and he obeyed. She sat next to him—the closest they’ve been, he thought suddenly—then laid down, closing her eyes, still breathing hard. Well. 

“I am forced to reflect,” he said, twisting to look at her, “that despite this being a singles cruise, this is the first time I’ve had a mostly-naked, soaking-wet woman lying next to me and panting.” 

She laughed at that, rolled so she can prop up her head with one arm. “Again with this unfucked friend routine,” she said.

“I thought we’d clearly established our preferred names for each other last time we conversed,” Kylo said. He's holding out a drink to her. 

This time she took it. “My apologies, Kylo,” she said. “So I take it you don’t often wake up at 6am to watch women swim?” 

“You know, I can’t remember the last time I ever did that,” he said, thoughtfully. “You may be the first.” He lifted his glass towards hers. “To being my first,” he said, and she laughed again. 

“I can’t say I reciprocate that sentiment,” she said, but clinks glasses together anyway. They both took a sip. The champagne is dry, effervescent, and the orange juice sugary and acidic. “But lest you think I’m some sort of cam girl with a swimming routine, let me hasten to add that I swam in college and strange men watched me swim early in the morning very routinely.” 

“And here I was, very excited to find out your cam girl website,” Kylo said idly, and Rey laughed again. 

“What actually makes you rise at six in the morning on vacation?” she asked, sitting up fully. Now they are both sharing a lounge chair, side-by-side, thighs touching as she swirled the mimosa in the champagne flute. 

“Hmm, well,” Kylo said, staring thoughtfully across the deck to the bar, where a staff person has come in and discovered an open bottle of orange juice and champagne on the counter. “I do share a wall with Poe, who unfortunately decided to have very rowdy sex starting about, oh, twenty minutes ago.” 

She laughed again. “I mean it is a singles cruise,” she said. “I can’t imagine this was the first time this happened to you? I mean, I was also briefly woken up last night at 2 by some girl next to me shrieking, but—“ 

“I think it was the spanking,” Kylo said thoughtfully, and Rey winced. 

“Oh no.”

“I also think there was a ‘daddy’ in there somewhere.” 

“Oh god.”

Kylo lifted his glass. “You see why I fled.” 

Rey swirled her glass some more, then lifted it to her lips. “Do you often drink so early in the morning?” 

“Daily,” he said, watching the glass at her lips. “I just happened to see you and thought I could make the promise on that drink sooner rather than later.” 

“So this is it?” Rey said, and his heart did something funny. 

“Certainly not,” he added hastily. “I mean, a mimosa isn’t even a real drink. You have to have at least three before it counts, right?” 

“Oh, thank goodness,” she said, and the thing in his chest moved again. She finished her first one. “Fill me up, then.” 

He raised an eyebrow at her but a smile twitched at his mouth. “So demanding,” he said, taking the glass from her hand. Their fingers tips brushed. Her hands were cool, already dry from the pool. Her eyes flickered and he knows she felt it as well. He set the empty glasses down next to him then picked up her hand, rough and small in his own. He looked into her eyes and lightly touched his lips to the back of her hand before dropping it. “As you wish,” he said, and stood up, walking back to the bar with the empty glasses. 

“Fill me up, please,” he said to the bartender, showing his room card with the unlimited drinks sticker. She complied with mimosas that werere 80% champagne. 

He turned back around to see her stretched out in the lounge chair, head back. Her hands lay palm down on her thighs. 

“Your drink, madam,” he said, and without hesitancy sat on the same lounge chair, next to her. She opened her eyes and her gaze flickered to where he’s sat down, but she crossed one leg over the other to make more room for him. 

“Madam makes me sound so old,” she said. She took the glass from his hand. 

“Are you?” he asked. 

“Am I old? That’s rude,” she said. “Asking a woman her age.”

“Let’s pretend I’m thirty four,” he said. “And I’m trying to avoid dating those ‘I’m definitely twenty-one!’ single girls on this ship.” 

“Oh, well then,” she said. “Let me assure you I am not air-quotes twenty one and have actually left twenty one behind me several years ago.” She lifted the glass to her lips, then paused. “Dating?” she asked. “An all-you-can-eat-buffet and stalking a morning swim now count as dating?” 

“Hmm, yes, I usually try to make the food better on real dates,” Kylo said, taking another drink. “Would you prefer a filet mignon next time?” 

She smiled again. “So, to clarify, this is you asking me out on a real date?" 

“Well, you said that the buffet and the swim counted as a date, not me,” he offered. “I thought I made my dating offer clear last time. I was merely trying to improve on your experience.” 

“Yes, improve,” she said. “We’re not even into the third mimosa of this date yet, though. There has to be room for improvement yet.” 

“Shall we make it a breakfast date?” Kylo asked, and stood up. He offered her his hand. 

“Are you taking me to the buffet again,” she asked, more resigned statement than question, but sat up. 

“I can't take you to the Rainbow Room in the middle of the Atlantic ocean, after all. Come with me,” he said, his hand outstretched toward her. He had sudden deja vu as she stared up at him, her eyes liquid in the early morning light. This time, there’s no good reason she can’t. 

“Do you think I’m up to dress code?” she asked, and put her hand in his. His smile was sudden, unstoppable, changing the landscape of his face as his fingers closed over her palm. He took her by the elbow as she stood, and didn't let go of her hand. 

“If they won’t let you in with a silver bikini, I’ll take my all-black gym attire business elsewhere,” he responded gravely, still looking at her face. The hint of smile was still there as he said “Rey, have you not been paying attention to anything on this ship? I think they let bikini-clad girls go everywhere.” 

Hairs stood up on her arms as he said her name. Seeing them, he asked, “you’re cold?”, and reached down to pick up her towel, wrapped it around her shoulders protectively. 

“Well, I am, as you pointed out, soaking wet,” she said. 

“Should we shower before breakfast?” he asked.

She snorted. "Nice try," she said. "Can't we just steal one of those fancy waffle robes from the spa?" 

"I think I've missed the spa," Kylo said as they walked back inside, back onto the purple carpeting. "What are you here for, Rey? The all-inclusive spa package?" 

"There's nothing wrong with a hot bath," Rey said, as they walk through the corridor down toward the glass spa doors. "I think you, more than me, seem like the kind of man who wants to lay naked in a bathtub made from the world's most enormous geode." 

Some rerouting of blood flow takes place with the mention of a naked bath, but his pulse remained steady. The pressure of her hand felt like to be a focal point on his body, drawing blood up out of his veins. "I do love exorbitant things," Kylo said. "But you know, real men at spas, all that." 

"Mm. Well, you're missing out," she said. She dropped his hand to push open the glass spa doors and he felt suddenly a few degrees colder. "I don't think they're open til 9, though." She made her way through a wicker basket in one corner, where folded white robes were kept. Kylo watched her remove the towel, his eyes following the lines of her body as she pulled the robe over her bikini. She dropped the towel into a hamper, then turned and caught him staring at her. She rolled her eyes. 

"Please, don't look quite so thirsty, it's quite putting me off breakfast." 

Kylo tilted his head. "I can't imagine what you mean," he said. "I was just reading this informational spa description behind you. You misled me, you know," he said, walking toward her, and she turned with him look into the glass window behind the desk. He tapped a poster discreetly put up behind the desk. "This says it's an imitation of the world's most giant geode bathtub. I just don't think I can do with an imitation."

"Yes, very reasonable," she said. "Give me a real giant geode bathtub or why even bathe, honestly." 

"Warmer?" Kylo asked, and Rey nodded. "Breakfast?" 

This time they walked side by side but kept hands to themselves. At the buffet he brought two coffees to their table, and she didn't comment when he brought her an individual pitcher of cream. He did raise his eyes when he saw her plate, which was far from the fruit and yogurt he expected. 

"How many eggs is that?" he asked, and she looked down, her mouth already full. She shrugged and kept chewing. He gave a lopsided smile. "Sugar?" 

She nodded vigorously and he pushed the sugar packets towards her. She swallowed. "It's swimming," she said, taking the coffee without comment. "You know how it is." 

"It's apparently a half dozen eggs and a good half pound of bacon," said Kylo, who had a quiche square and a large coffee without sugar, which he took a sip from and frowned. 

"I'm sorry, do you prefer waifish, half-a-salad-and-I'm-full type of women?" 

Kylo hid a smile in his coffee. "Far be it from me to tell a woman what to eat," he said blandly, rearranging his facial features. Rey was pouring cream into her coffee, which was at this point more cream than coffee. 

"So you do have at least a few good points," she said. 

"If it's half coffee and half half-and-half, does that make that a 25% coffee," Kylo asked, and Rey threw a sugar packet at him. He tore the top off and poured it into her coffee. She stirred it and took another sip. 

"You know the best way to drink coffee," she began. 

"In Italy?" asked Kylo. "Where they make real coffee?" 

"With ice cream," said Rey. 

"Oh god, you and Poe and your affogatos." 

"What's an affogato?" she asked, shoveling more eggs into her mouth. 

Kylo reached for the salt to assault his quiche. "Ice cream with a shot of two of espresso on top," he said. She swallowed her eggs. 

"Maybe there is something to Italian coffee after all," Rey said thoughtfully. 

"Besides a thousand years of coffee history, or something?" 

"Are you always so pretentious about things?" 

Kylo reached with his fork and took a bite of quiche as she stuffed two pieces of bacon in her mouth. "Here is what's actually pretentious," he said, gesturing with the quiche on the fork. "Someone who starts lecturing you about how Starbucks is the pinnacle of good coffee. There is a difference between pretension and actually knowing important, foundational facts about a process which happens to be well known superficially. Coffee, for instance." 

"Hmm, yes, those starbucks-loving peasants wouldn't know know _Coffea arabica_ from _Coffea canephora,_ " said Rey, taking another bite. 

Kylo paused a moment while his brain did some rewiring. "You--hold on," he said. If Finn were there, he would have sighed and looked at Rey with a _He does this knowledge versus pretension speech all the time_ , but it never went like this. 

"Oh?" said Rey, a small smile on her face as she watched his thoughts shift gears. "Are you more of a _Coffea liberica_ fan?" 

"Why....why do you know the species names of different type of coffee plants but not what actual coffee drinks are called?" 

Rey took another sip. "I'm more of a tea drinker," she confessed. "I know I should like a robust Earl Grey or a Darjeeling but take out the milk and sugar and you may as well stick with a nice sencha, or gyokuro, if you're feeling fancy." 

"Are you a botanist?" asked Kylo, who was suddenly much more interested in the professional life of the woman in front of him. 

"I studied botany a bit," she said, biting into a croissant. "I thought you didn't want to talk about our jobs? Or are you a barista and you've been secretly talking about your job the whole time in the guise of mansplaining coffee to me?" 

Kylo couldn't hold back a small laugh. "No," he said. "No, it is fair to say in my job that I do not deal with that kind of organic matter. And I wouldn't say mansplain," he continued, as Rey rolled her eyes. "I just love exposition in general. Please do stop me if you feel condescended to." 

"Hm, well, yes, if you'd like to discuss edible plants maybe you should at least see who in the conversation studied more botany?" She tilted her head on the last word and took another bite of croissant. 

Kylo raised his hands. "Fine, Rey the Swimming Botanist. Far be it from me to lecture you on plants again." He took a bite of quiche. 

Rey burst out laughing. "Oh, don't look so hurt," she said. "Have you spent all your time with women who just took one look at you and said 'yes, how interesting' to everything you said? Good looks only get you so far in this world." 

"Did you just admit you think I'm good looking?" asked Kylo, raising an eyebrow at her. 

Rey blushed suddenly, unexpectedly. "That's not what I meant," she said, but he was already smiling. 

"Fine then," he said. "What's your pet peeve, then? What thing, Rey, do you grind your teeth over whenever people try to explain it to you wrong?" 

"Where to start," she mused. The eggs and bacon had all disappeared. Kylo still had half a quiche in front of him. She started putting butter on a second croissant. "I think the big one is judging strangers," she said. "Making comments about someone's hair looking bad, or how they shouldn't wear leggings as pants."

"Oh no, you're a Girl Scout," said Kylo, feigning horror. "Kind, thrifty, honest, respectful? Didn't your kind die out long ago? What are you doing here on a cruise full of bros who shorten every word to be one syllable?" 

"They do what?" Rey asked. 

Kylo gestured. "Cutsey nicknames," he said. "Girls who say 'totes adorbs' and 'obvi'. Bros that use 'money' as a synonym for 'good' and 'bangin' as an adjective to describe literally everything." 

"I think the culture of bros is slightly different where I'm from," she said. 

"Where are you from?" asked Kylo. "I know, I broke the rules, fine. But where?" 

"Nowhere," said Rey. 

"No one's from nowhere," said Kylo. 

"East Peckham," said Rey. 

"Okay, that's pretty close," said Kylo. He looked at her. She raised an eyebrow and took another bite of croissant. 

"You're dying to say it," she said, after she swallowed her bite. "Go on, you're allowed."

"I'm from New York," Kylo said. 

"Cruising from home, then?" asked Rey. (The cruise was between New York City and the United Kingdom.)

"Home sweet home," he said. "The only people more insufferable than New Yorkers are, dare I say, Londoners." 

"Oh, don't worry about me," she said. "I'm quite far outside of London. But I moved all over. Branbridges, Laddingford. Lots of nowhere. Nothing like you New Yorkers." 

"So why are you cruising from the countryside of the UK to the American city, then?" asked Kylo. 

"This is getting dangerously conversational," said Rey. "You're going to have to find out it's for work, and you'll be so disappointed." 

"I was hoping you lived a life of leisure or exotic mystery," said Kylo, finishing his quiche. 

"Would you like me to say it's classified?" 

He swallowed. "Then I'd have to tell you my security clearance," he said. She met his eyes and got the uneasy sense he wasn't joking. 

"But then you'd have to kill me, right?" she said. She smiled suddenly, down into her coffee, not at him. "Or at least try." 

"Oh? Weapons training? Femme fatale? Martial arts?" Kylo leaned forward. "Please, do entice me further. Tell me all the ways you can injure or dismember me."

"I save that dirty talk for at least a third date," said Rey, and his chest felt funny again. She finished her coffee. "And now, Kylo, as marvelous as you must be, I am very acutely aware of how much I smell like chlorine and how much I want to wash my hair." She pushed her plate forward and stood up. "I'll see you around, then?" 

"Oh, I hope so," said Kylo. He didn't stand up but looked up at her with a gaze that made her face feel hot again, for no reason she could define. She hesitated, then nodded and turned towards the doors. 

Kylo stayed seated for several minutes after she left. Finally he pulled her plate towards himself and ate the last piece of bacon. 

 

\-- 

Let's start over. They never meet like that. Not in the version they tell everyone, later. 

This was how they met again: at the poker table, as promised. 

Kylo's a meticulous poker player. What started as an exercise for the math majors (one of his majors, anyway) in probability, predictive models turned into what Kylo would never call a gambling problem, no matter what his mother might call it. He only drank during games after Finn dug up the ancient paper proving the blood-alcohol and skill correlation. He's, in a word, cerebral. Finn and Poe have been playing with him too long now, and know how he plays, all used to each other's foibles. 

The cruise ship has a real casino, reminiscent of that party where they first met and became friends years ago. This time there are actual lush carpets, purple with flecks of gold, dark wood chairs, copious dim lighting and the distant thrum of the slot machines behind them. 

He suspects she may be coming so he was on even higher alert than the previous nights, watching the door. "You seem distracted, Kylo," Poe said, after his eyes jumped up for the third time to a girl entering the poker table area. 

"Expecting someone?" Finn asked. 

"Did the infamous Kylo Ren finally hit it off with some girl?" Poe asked, incredulous. 

"I've heard you're having luck," Kylo said to Finn, laying a card down idly. "That cute asian girl?" 

"Her name is Rose," Finn said. 

"Finn, buddy, we didn't actually come to meet girls," Poe said. "One more card." 

The dealer obliged. Poe picked it up, looked it, then looked up and winked at Kylo roguishly. 

"You know, I think I was confused on that front, seeing how you broght us on a singles cruise," Finn said. 

"Amateur mistake," Kylo said. "This is an obvious rebound ploy from our dear friend Poe." 

"So dear," Poe said. "All right fuckers, show hands."

Hands were laid down. Kylo won with a pair of jacks, and he laughed, buoyed with the thrill of iwnning. As he was pulling chips towards him, a new voice entered the fray. 

"Any room here?" She asked, a new voice with just a trace of a british accent. 

Finn stood up. "Welcome, please," he said. 

Kylo looked up, cursing under his breath. "Hello, Rey," he said. 

She noded her head. Today it was another gray dress, v-neck, this one brushing the floor. 

Poe laughed. "Oh wait, you're the honeydew girl!" He said, delighted. 

Rey nodded. "Oh, so nice to see you again too, recently-dumped friend," she said. So he's the friend now, Kylo noted. Her hair was half up this time, and the loose section brushed the tops of her collarbone. 

"Deal her in, please," Poe said, gesturing. "Do forgive me if I don't get up, I'm not half the gentleman of my friend Finn here." 

"Really I should be the one pulling out your chair," Kylo said, "Only I'm so busy arranging my winnings, you see." 

Rey rolled her eyes. "Oh, no need," she said, and pulled out her own chair, sitting down between Finn and Poe, directly across from Kylo. "I'm Rey," she said. To Finn she added, "I think I've seen you around quite a few times with my roommate?" 

"Wait, is Rose your roommate?" Finn said. 

"She must not have mentioned me," Rey said, dryly, as she picked up her cards. "Must have been busy."

"Oh, FInn keeps them very busy," Poe said. he turned towards her and gave her a winning smile of the type that Kylo suddenly found very annoying. Rey merely cocked an eyebrow. 

"No chit-chat in your boys' love lives? All work and no play?" 

"Oh, with us I think you'll find it's all play," Kylo said, He threw a few chips into the center of the table. "Are you one to play?" 

Rey's eyes flicked down to her cards. "It's all about the joy of the game, isn't it," she said, smiling, and tossed a chip in as well. 

"And I thought I was the only one coming to this singles cruise to play the field,"Poe said, echoing their move. 

"Hmm, I believe I'm a bit like our mutual undersexed friend over there," Rey said, gesturing to Kylo. "Brought along for the ride, as it were, wing-womaning." 

"How's that going?" Finn asked. 

Rey raised an eyebrow. "Well, she seems to have found you, didn't she? Another card, please," she said to the dealer. 

"I thought we had agreed to drop the unsexed friend moniker," Kylo said, motioning for another card as well. 

"My apologies, Kylo," she said. "Did you finally find a coed to your liking?" 

"Oh, I think he found at least one," Poe said, looking intently at his cards, and Kylo kicked him under the table. 

"Last round," the dealer said. 

Rey smiled and put in three more chips. "I say, this is quite fun," she said, smiling. "I haven't had luck like this in a few years. Here I have a table of three eligible bachelors all to myself, and a good game of poker, besides."

Kylo stared at his hands. He only had a pair of nines, but something about the sparkle in Rey's eye make him pause. 

"I got jack," Finn said, setting down his cards. "Fold." 

Poe set his down too. "I may be pokered out," he said, with meaningful looks at Finn. 

Rey smiled at Kylo, meeting his eyes directly.. "That leaves you and me, doesn't it," she said. Her hands weren't wavering. The reflected lights in her eyes seemed to be dancing. 

"I don't know if I believe you," Kylo said slowly, throwing in one more chip. "All this talk about luck? Meeting eligible bachelors? I don't buy it."

Rey, holding his gaze, pushed another handful of chips into the center of the table. "We could find out," she said. 

Kylo hesitated. But the pair of nines wasn't that good. Statistically she would beat him. Cut losses. 

"I fold," he said. 

Rey smiled and set down a hand with absolutely nothing. "We're going to get along wonderfully," she said, pulling the chips toward herself. 

Finn started laughing. "You two go to town," he said, and stood up. 

"I know when to bow out," Poe said. He winked obviously at Kylo. 

"I can't believe you bluffed me," Kylo said, as Rey picked up her chips. "I'm very mathematical in my game, you know." 

"Yes, I suspected as much," Rey said. "If we can't do another round, how about we get another drink?" 

"Whatever you like," said Kylo, and stood up, offering her his arm. He was very much taller than her. She hesitated then stood up and took it. 

"Do you drink much?" she said. "Only I feel rather like drinking." 

"Then let's make it a double," said Kylo, and flagged down a waiter. 

\---

Poker is a very emotional game, which Rey knows well, which would disappoint Kylo if he were to realize it. It's not math, not the way he thinks it is. 

Rey learned to play poker about the age when she learned to start fixing cars: ten or eleven. She was growing up in foster care, and had bounced into the life of a family with a garage, the kind where they worked on old cars. Her foster mother Cheryl, a tired looking blonde with a perpetual Lucky Strike in her hand, babysat kids in the neighborhood, a gaggle of young children among which Rey was the oldest. Her foster father, Mike, worked fixing up cars that someone like Kylo would think weren't worth fixing. She learned cars from working on not-nice cars, ten year old Astras, twenty year old Ford trucks and sportscars that had been great in the eighties but had long ago stopped reselling for anything when their third radiator gave out.

She learned basic circuits, radiators, radios, carborators, and, from an older boy in the neighborhood, the beginnings of computers. He had dark hair and glasses and a passion for tinkering that made twelve year old Rey's heart beat faster around him. He was a nerd, quiet, glasses, but with Ideas--he wanted to build things, and program them with his code. He wasn't mechanically inclined and after fixing a few of his first attempts, modified remote control cars, Rey somehow became the mechanic and he the programmer. Eventually it got to the point where Rey would build the things and he would program them. Sometimes he would teach her the code, but more often he was uninterested in teaching the twelve year old. The crush fizzled and died when he refused to share with her the instructions on how he made the video camera link into the remote control and the computer, telling her it was too advanced for a girl. In that instant her small crush turned into something else, and wordlessly she broke the camera off the car she had built for him and left, never to return. 

Instead Rey picked up programming herself, digging through outdated books at the public library that was a thirty minute walk away from the foster home, coming back late with no one realizing she was gone. She carried books like Programming for Dummies! C++ Basics in a tote bag over her shoulder and flipped through sitting on the floor of the garage while Mike played pop radio and worked on engines, stopping only for brief lectures on what the exact problem was with this drive belt. After school was over, she used the library computers as long as they would let her stay, laboriously typing lines of code word for word from her books. She learned the shape of controls becoming commands, learned how she could change them by tinkering, getting frustrated as lines of code broke apart and programs failed to run after one small mistake it took her hours to fix. 

It didn't stop her lessons with Mike, who put up with the scrawny thirteen year old in the garage as any natural talker would--by explaining any current problem he was working on. Mike also loved poker. He drank a lot, cheap beer, and on the weekends when his buddies came over and drank in the garage with the doors open in the summertime, they thought it was funny to teach Rey to play poker. 

It wasn't about the cards you had in our hand, she learned, very early, a child becoming a teenage girl, holding a hand that never even had a pair. It was all in the way you bluffed. 

 

And so she did. Cheryl and Mike weren't rich but it was more freedom than Rey had had in her life so far, and the three years she spent with them she absorbed the world. Rey was a child made quiet by a lifetime of people not having space for her, under the loud encouragement of Mike she learned to ask questions during his lectures, that questions were often rewarded with attention, or delight, or chances to tinker and try a theory for herself. Cheryl, who was often too busy for Rey, nevertheless had a soft spot for the quiet girl who helped the smaller children with homework and brought her gifts, food, and let her have free reign. They both encouraged her tinkering, and under Cheryl's chain-smoking encouragement she learned to fix the TV, program the VCR. From Mike, who did a booming business with the teenage boys making cars play loud music more obnoxiously, she was expected to replace car radios, put in new speakers, and became a neighborhood point of pride as Mike bragged about her running the car stereo business with minimal supervision from him. Rey bloomed. 

Never good with people as a child, even at this time of her life she combined the natural awkwardness of a teenager with the excuse to hide behind mechanical things. Her interactions with customers, classmates, teachers were often mumbled and only as long as necessary. Taught by her past with worse foster families to read a room very carefully, she only acted the emotion she thought was expected of her at the time, for as little time as possible. Human poker. With people she faked it. The only thing that seemed real, not some elaborate lie requiring a lot of effort, was when she had free reign of the garage and the workbench. On that bench she put parts together to make little devices, plugged them into the error-prone code she worked on to make them robots. She programmed a series of small flying robots that mimicked the flight of a dragonfly, which took her the better part of two months. She entered a scrappy robotics competition at her local underperforming high school, and won first prize. For two weeks Rey had dreams about the regional conference she was going to attend, the robots she'd get to see, with all the fumbling excitement a teenage girl would usually reserve for a first dance. 

Except that was about the time these foster parents finally split, Cheryl having enough of Mike's bad beer and late-night gambling, losing the utility bill to a client he'd just bet the rest of those repair payments to. With the dissolution of that marriage over a screaming fight that broke the TV, again, came the shock of destabilization, something Rey should have been used to by now. It was still more painful than it should have been to shove all her loose parts into a suitcase, to wrap her dragonfly robot up in socks to try to keep it safe, to save her laborious code onto a flash drive buried at the bottom of her backpack. She didn't make it to regionals that year. 

The next set of foster parents was very Christian, with one family computer in the living room, a new foster mother who called all her parts "junk" and didn't let her tinker at home. They had a biological son, unthinkingly arrogant and carelessly cruel, who broke her dragonfly robot one day not out of spite but carelessness, who shrugged an unthinking "sorry" that was worse than if he had smashed it on purpose. 

If she were given to crying she would have cried. Her new school was small and far outside the city limits. They had a robotics club, too, even if it only had five bored members, that Rey joined immediately. She stole spare parts, and used the club computers, and between the after school hours and a dim but well meaning teacher who left her alone, managed to coax her dragonfly back to life. 

These days she was a little more robust in her programming. She brought thick books home with horrible titles about C++, Debugging As You Work, and Programming For Our Age, and skimmed them looking for anything useful. Programming, Rey discovered, was more labor intensive than building, less trial and error, less working by feel, more laboriously poring over lines of code and trying to decipher others' examples to see what she could change to make it work for her. She made the dragonfly blink, gave it feelers she could program to move in three axes to seem more animated. She scavenged old webcams, gutting them to give it two cameras instead of one after reading a long magazine article about possibilities of dual lens photography. School became then just a vehicle, something she sat through while daydreaming about her robotics, latching onto anything interesting to see if she could make her robot better, anything she could incorporate into the programming. From the cameras and optics she tried projectors, which proved too heavy for the dragonfly body. Eventually Rey came to build her second robot, from scratch, attempting a spherical design that would roll around, be large enough to accommodate multiple cameras and also the projector equipment she wanted to try to use to turn this two-lens 3D system into a holographic projector. She copied little bit of useful code and stuck them into the robots' memory, unsure of what good they would do, if any. The sphere, about as big as a basketball, looked alien and unwelcoming, so she gave it a little head that would bob along as it rolled to make it more friendly. 

That year, between the flying dragonfly and the rolling robot, she did make it to regionals. It was her first glimpse into a world full of possibility. It surprised her to see most designs less innovative than her own, a large number of glorified remote control cars or helicopters with little mechanical innovation, though she did learn from the programming. Her designs, mechanically complex but simple from a computer standpoint, earned her a prize in a design subcategory. She shared that subcategory with two other entrants--all women. 

It was enough to get her a scholarship. Her foster family, understanding nothing, took credit for her accomplishments anyway and send her off to college. At a graduation full of people she didn't really know, Rey heard this mother saying things like "well you know foster care is SO rewarding, she was practically feral when we took her in, you know, and look at her now, scholarship and all--"

She used the secondhand gray clothes that made up most of her wardrobe to pad all her parts and hard drives, packed in three suitcases, and packed everything herself. She hadn't worked on cars, or anything larger than a box fan, in a year. Sitting in her bedroom, the night before she left, all her spare parts mechanical and organic in one small pile next to her borrowed bed, she listened to the noises of the TV downstairs as this foster family went about their lives like they always had, like they always wound, plus or minus one more mouth to feed that never took up much space in their lives anyway. She thought of the organized chaos of the garage, the workbench where she could do whatever she liked, the encouraging words of a bumbling foster father. She thought of the garage where, on Friday night poker games, she was encouraged to speak, expected to play, praised for being good at lying. More than cars she missed playing poker. 

Only in later years would she ever compare her college experience to Kylo's. Very little was similar. As one of the only girls in the technical school, Rey was often ignored, ridiculed, or spoken down to. Despite the lack of peers--which she didn't miss, having never known it in the first place--the coursework was a revelation. For the first time everything made sense to her. Things she had been struggling with for years had logical explanations, books on the syllabus seemed made to answer her questions, and the math went from frustratingly abstract to immediately relevant, and the abstract bits close enough that they didn't feel like the angering chore they were before. For the first time, too, her professors seemed intelligent, no bumbling under-paid public school teachers who burnt out years ago but men (all men) with drive, purpose, a sense of humor, and a twinkle in their eye for the only female student who asked them questions after class. 

Of course there were creeps, predators. But this was language Rey didn't have then, and men treating her like a cute little child whose body they were allowed to stare at and make comments about was just what had always happened to her. The only lessons on sex she had ever had were from that too-Christian foster mom, telling her that sex would be polluting her body and scarring her for life, and from the raucous poker nights in the garage, when lewd comments by drunk middle aged men gave a prepubescent girl some rough idea of the mechanics. She knew enough to lie to professors about why she couldn't meet them outside of office hours, even when they marked her down for it, even if she was putting the same answers they marked correct in her male classmates. 

Her first actual female friend was Rose, two years below her, coming into the same technical college. They got roomed together, the only two girls in the program. Rey, who was very used to living in an all-boys world where she was expected to take up minimal space, did not expect her tomboyish roommate to come into their room, flop down on the bed, and exclaim "Jesus, what fucking shit is this, they give the two girls the smallest room on the floor?"

And despite their vastly different outlooks, something began to shift in Rey's mind as she made a friend for the first time. 

With Rose around, she wasn't alone anymore. She wasn't just a victim who had to protect herself, and the only freedom wasn't just in the small spherical robot she had kept building. They went to cafes together, helped each other with homework (or at least Rey helped Rose with the homework) and suddenly there was someone who was there to listen to her jokes, who was laughing at the same things she'd always said aloud to her empty room or the droid taking shape, silently, in the corner. She went to bars for the first time, dimly-lit typical sportsbars with cheap beer and cosmos, and felt like the dark wood in front of her was the world opening up, less scary than she had always thought, with Rose there, a friend, to make the small talk with the bartender, give the brush to the weirdos who wanted to accost them. Rose, who had always had a sister around to joke with and fight with, had no trouble talking to people or making jokes. It was easy for Rose to see Rey, too, to notice all the ways her roommate was afraid to take up space. 

It was helpful to bounce ideas off each other. Rose, no shabby roboticist herself, helped her troubleshoot and add useful subroutines to the programming.

For many of her male colleagues, it was a time of discovery. Had she been male, Rey would have brought her dragonfly droid to class, using its dual-camera eyes to record lectures and take notes, impressing classmates with witty jokes about math or engineering, or new subroutines she would add to the dragonfly's programming. But only she and Rose got that joy, building prototypes, flying them around their oddly-shaped corner dorm room. 

It was how she got a job, after all, too. That rolling robot caused quite a splash at the robotics fair with the holographic projector, the dual cameras, the multi-tool compartments for arms. They hailed its ingenious, multi-way rolling design, the magnetically attached bobbing head. She got several job offers but only one stuck out in her mind. 

He was an old man, by new tech standards, with unkempt hair not atypical of the field, wearing a shabby brown coat. "You're going to get a lot of job offers, based on this," he said to Rey, as the droid made another demonstration of its holographic projector to some passersby. "You should think about what you want out of this industry. Think about what you want out of this world, and where you want the world to go. Don't just think about the bottom line, Rey. Think about how you can shape the future. Devices like this," he said, touching the small head of the droid, "will change it. You deserve a corporation who understands what that means, and who wants that change to be good." 

He gave her a card, plainer than the rest, a heavy, matte blue paper with white lettering. "The money isn't all that's important," he said. "Call me when you're ready to talk."

He walked way, and Rey turned the card over in her hands. On one side was a phone number, and on the other side, in white letters, were the words SKYWALKER LABORATORIES.


	4. Chapter 4

"Kylo. Kylo. Kylo." 

Kylo Ren blinked. His head immediately protested the sensation and screamed in agony. His mouth felt like old shoes. What the--

He turned his head to see Poe and Finn, both sitting on the bench across from his bed. Bed? Bench? 

"S--where?" he started, then tried again. "Floor moving?"

"You're on a boat," said Poe. 

"It's Thursday," said Finn. 

"Singles cruise," said Poe. 

Kylo blinked again. Oh, right. Boat. 

"Kylo," someone said again, and he blinked and looked back over to realized Poe was saying his name again. 

"Did I--" he had to move his mouth to get his tongue to work right. "How much did I drink?" 

"Well, you didn't throw up," said Poe, ever the optimist. Finn raised one eyebrow at this and sighed.

"Kylo, do you remember any of last night?" 

Kylo closed his eyes tightly, then opened them again. Still there. "Let's...let's pretend I don't," he said. It took a lot of effort to roll to the side to face Finn & Poe. 

"I mean, you did drink approximately three bottles of bourbon," said Poe, thoughtfully. "I knew you could put it away but I thought you had to have a limit somewhere."

"I know you were into that girl," Finn was saying. "But dude, the Corvette?" 

"Now we've hit that limit," said Poe, still lost in his own thought. "The final destination. The zone between waking and sleeping, the past and the future, the hippocampus and the amygdala.....the black-out zone." 

"What girl?" asked Kylo, struggling to sit up. 

"Rey," said Finn. Kylo sat bolt upright, only to be hit by a sudden wave of nausea. Poe handed him a trash bag as his face blanched and he puked up something acidic and unidentifiably brown. 

"I hate throwing up," he moaned. 

"Hmm, well, that's very expensive vomitus," said Poe. "Gotta be at least 120 proof, still. Do you think we could set it on fire?" he asked Finn. 

"Do not set Kylo's blackout drunk vomit on fire," Finn told Poe. Poe sighed dramatically. 

"You take away all my fun," he said, but Kylo had stopped paying attention. 

"Rey?" he said, and it was really, quite unfortunate how his voice croaked on that. His mouth still tasted like vomit. "I got blackout drunk--with Rey?" 

"I mean, I assume you did," said Finn. "Why else would you do that?" 

"Do what?" asked Kylo. 

"You know you shouldn't play poker when you're really drunk," said Poe. "Especially you. I was surprised. Must have it bad for this girl." 

"I played poker?" Kylo rubbed his eyes. 

"With a shocking facade of sobriety," Finn said. "Right until you ran out of chips and you bet her your 69 Corvette against a kiss that you could win the last hand." 

"I did WHAT--" 

Poe started laughing hysterically. "Oh god, it's even better watching his reaction," he said, as Kylo's attempt to lurch to his feet resulted in him falling to the floor and puking in the bag again. 

"Why didn't you stop me," said Kylo, wiping his mouth. "Or at least get me some water. Something." 

Poe stood up and walked over to the tiny sink. 

"You were very insistent," said Finn, who couldn't quite hide his smile. "And besides, I've never seen you do something that dumb for a girl before." 

"Truly a once in a lifetime opportunity," said Poe, handing him a glass of water.

"You fake friends," Kylo mumbled, still failing at getting up off the floor next to his trash can. "Ultimate betrayers, mutineers, backstabbers--" 

"Oh, whatever, Kylo," said Finn. "You have an entire parking garage floor that is just your cars. Taking up space in Manhattan. Watching you gamble one away in a moment of emotional vulnerability was maybe the high point of this cruise for me." 

"Yeah, when you put it that way," Poe said, refilling Kylo's water, "I think this could be a real breakthrough for you. Therapy, kinda. The giving of the self for the other. Has he ever done that before?" he asked Finn. 

"I hate you," Kylo said. 

"Ummmm....." said Finn. 

"I do everything for you!" Kylo yelled, muffled, into the vomit trash bag. 

"Hmmmm...." said Poe, looking doubtful, as he handed Kylo the water. 

"Whose stupid idea was this dumb cruise," Kylo muttered. 

"How's your love life going, buddy?" Poe asked Finn, while Kylo moaned. "Are you really serious about that Rose girl?" 

"Nah, I'm not sure yet," said Finn. "I mean, I like her, but I think she's more into me? I like her, and we have a good time, but I don't know if it's gonna work after the cruise." 

"Well, don't commit yourself," said Poe, patting Kylo on the shoulder as he crawled toward the bathroom. "We all know what happens when you commit yourself too soon." He sighed woefully. 

"Don't beat yourself up about it, friend," said Finn. He raised his voice slightly over the sounds of Kylo retching. "I think you've done a really good job. You went through a tough thing there and anything we can do to help you, we will do. Right, Kylo?" 

The sound was Kylo puking again. Finn nodded and looked into Poe's eyes. "I think that's a yes." 

"Couldn't do it without you, bro," said Poe, and the two exchanged a bro hug, broken only by the sound of Kylo's semisolid vomit hitting the toilet. 

"Should we check on him?" Poe asked, after a moment of silence. Finn shrugged. 

"Buddy?" Poe asked, poking his head in the bathroom door. Kylo was too large of a person to fit comfortably into the tiny cruise ship cabin bathroom and so most of his feet and legs were still out of the bathroom, blocking the cabin door. His head rested on the edge of the toilet, eyes red and watering. 

"The 69 Corvette," he whispered. 

Finn patted his shoulder. "It's emotional growth," he said. 

"It hurts," rasped Kylo. 

"Emotions are tough," said Poe. 

"My stomach hurts so much," Kylo said, and vomited again. 

"Well, that's kinda the same thing," said Poe. "Do you think he needs IV fluids, or something?" 

"That's a lot of liquid," said Finn, and flushed the toilet as Kylo gasped and laid his head back on the floor. "Buddy, you wanna go to the ship nurse? Do you need your stomach pumped?" 

"I am insulted and disgusted you even imply that I couldn't--bleh--" Kylo started, and then gagged again, but this time only spit out yellow bile. "Zofran," he gasped weakly. 

"Why do you have zofran?" Poe asked. 

"Backpack front pocket," Kylo said, and Poe went over to the backpack under the porthole, rummaging through the front pocket. 

"Do you get seasick?" he asked, bringing the orange bottle over to Kylo. 

"Yes," said Kylo, too tired to lie. 

"Awww," said Finn. 

"Open up," said Poe, and then seeing Kylo's face, said: "Nevermind. Here you go," and put the white tablet into Kylo's hand. 

"We can't leave him like this," Finn said, watching Kylo lie on the floor of the bathroom too small to even fit his entire body. 

"Yeah, let's take him back to bed," Poe sighed. "You done with all that vomiting there bro?" 

"A typical adult human stomach," said Kylo, "will secrete about 1.5 liters of gastric acid daily. This means, gentlemen, that I could keep vomiting indefinitely." 

"At least small volumes," said Finn. "I don't think you make 1.5 liters all at once, after all." 

"Did I really give away the 69 Corvette," said Kylo. 

"Well, I don't think you really 'gave it away; so much as 'lost it' in a 'fit of desperation'," said Poe, doing air quotes. 

"Who cares," said Finn. "You have too many cars. And too few emotional vulnerabilities." 

"I disagree," said Kylo, but then fell silent. "Did I at least make out with her?" 

"Not while I watched," said Finn. 

"Sorry, bro," said Poe. 

"Goddammit," said Kylo, and let the two take him back to bed. 

\--

His mother would be upset. The Corvette had been his father's. Kylo hated the thing, which was an ugly gunmetal gray and never as cool as his father thought it was. 

\--

 

When he finally made it back out into the living humans, after several liters of gatorade and what felt like half a bottle of zofran, he looked for her. She wasn't near the pool, where someone truly horrible was playing truly horrible pop music just to torment his still-pounding skull, or the buffet, where he ate dubious broth soup until the sandwich didn't make his stomach turn on site. She wasn't at the gym, where he sweat the last of the alcohol out of his pores and felt marginally better once all the muscles in his torso were sore from something besides vomiting. 

Late that evening he caught sight of a poster in the hall that said: _Party a little TOO hard? Rejuvenate in our luxury SPA!_ and aside from the dubious capitalization, the sentiment was to glaring and true an accusation to ignore. 

The spa was, mercifully for his pounding head, under-lit. Kylo, who hated human contact, refused all of the massage packages and merely asked for the miscellaneous and varied hot baths. Poe, who had crowed: "you're going to the SPA? Massages!!!!" had abandoned him at the first opportunity. Finn snorted and declined so he could go to the gym. 

He sunk into one of the hot tubs in the back, avoiding the crowded waterfall-massage pool, This was a salt water, body temperature pool that, if you believed the sign, was supposed to be neutral buoyancy and the same temperature as the human body. Special speakers played soothing music, if one person playing each chord for approximately two minutes counted as music, that could only be heard only underwater. Special pinpoint lights on the bottom of the pool changed colors and were supposed to make it look like the night sky. Kylo, who normally hated kitsch, found it strangely soothing. 

He was floating in the salt water, staring at the pinpoint light ceiling, listening to the music that sounded more like background hum made louder, when she found him. He noticed motion around the edge of the pool and sighed, standing so that his head was out of the water and distant people sounds were audible again. "Enjoy the massage, Poe?" He asked, turning around, then stopped. "Oh," he said. 

Rey was wearing the silver bikini again. She stood at the edge of the pool, looking at him hesitantly. "I'm sorry," he said, then shook his head. "I mean, I'm sorry for--anything I did last night, I mean, and also you are not Poe, I'm sorry..."

"Oh, you really are this hungover, huh," said Rey. She stepped into the pool. In the dim light her face was half-illuminated and the shadows of her breasts fell across her body in interesting ways. 

"Very," said Kylo, who sat on the bench at the edge of the pool and reached for the coconut water he had there. 

"Mmmm," she said, and fell silent. She was sitting as far away from him as she could be in a twelve-foot diameter circular pool.

"I hear I owe you something," Kylo said, after a few moments. 

Rey raised an eyebrow at him. "Oh?" 

"This may surprise you, but I am not absolutely 100% clear on everything that happened last night." 

"Don't tell me you forgot my masterful poker playing," said Rey. 

"While your specific strategy may elude me, the crushing sense of defeat does not," said Kylo. "A car, right?" 

Rey nodded but didn't speak. 

"We didn't kiss, or have sex, or anything, right?" Kylo asked, uncomfortable. "I mean, that would truly be the worst outcome of events."

"Having sex with me is worse than losing a car to me?" Rey asked. 

"Forgetting about it would be," Kylo answered. 

Even in the half-light he could see color come to her face. "Smooth-talker," she muttered. He tried to hide a smile in his drink of coconut water. 

"At least a 69 Corvette isn't that expensive," she pointed out. "It's not like you lost a 2000GT, or something."

"Are you a vintage car aficionado as well as a botanist now?" he asked. 

"I spent much more time with cars than plants," she answered. "Not in the way I suspect you like cars, though. This was more...proletariat, I think you would say." 

"Noted communist that I am," said Kylo, a man with an extremely extensive stock portfolio. 

"It's the bribes," said Rey. 

"Bribes?" 

"Gambling, then. Do you think real communists gamble?" 

"Merely one of the failures of communism. Failure to take into account the human love of gambling," Kylo said. 

"I was pretty sure you were going to avoid speaking to me again so as to try and forget you owed me a car," said Rey, sinking down lower into the water. 

"Compared to you, cars are not important," he said. There was a moment of silence. 

"You keep doing that," Rey said, sinking deeper into the water and moving towards the middle of the pool. 

"Mmm?" he asked, taking another drink of coconut water. Maybe the salt water pool was working to restore his body. He felt less like throwing up. But then again, that was probably her. 

"Being far too sincere," Rey said. "Can't you just keep insulting me, or something?" 

"Not you," he said.

She laid back in the water, floating. The low lighting threw shadows across her face and her body was lit from beneath by the pool lights, a floating silhouette in a pool of stars. He found himself reaching a hand toward her, but then hesitated and dropped his hand. She opened her eyes and surfaced, looking at him with those very large eyes. 

"Do you like the underwater music?" she asked. 

"I wasn't sure about the 'variations on one chord for three minutes' as an approach to music," he said, "but honestly, it's growing on me. Zen. At least if they'd stop shrieking," he said, lifting a hand out of the water to point towards the opening of the enclave, where the raucous laughing from the waterfall pools could be heard. 

"We land tomorrow," Rey said abruptly. 

"Now that's an anti-zen thought," he said. 

"I thought you weren't a fan of the cruise?" 

"There are some things I've come to enjoy," he said, meeting her gaze. She rolled her eyes. 

"You're doing it again," she said. 

"Am I?" 

"Thirsting." She was quite close to him the water now, and reached across his chest to pick up the cup he'd been drinking from. Maintaining eye contact, she drank from it, but the effect was immediately ruined when her face contorted horribly. 

"Oh god, it's COCONUT," she gasped, and Kylo burst out laughing. "You didn't tell me it was coconut, you sick bastard--" 

If she had been eight inches closer he would have closed the distance with a kiss in that exact moment, pulled her small, bikini-clad body to his bare chest, pressed his arms against her back. But she was already moving away from him, climbing out of the pool to throw away the ruined cup of coconut water. 

"Hey buddy, you still here," a voice called, and Poe's head appeared in the enclave. "Oh, it's you," he said, in a very different tone of voice, as Rey straightened up. Possibly she was blushing, but it was hard to tell in the low light. "Sorry to interrupt," he said, but Rey picked up a towel. 

"Oh no, I was just leaving," she said, and pushed past him. 

"Rat bastard," said Kylo. 

"Sorry bro," Poe said, shrugging. 

"Are we really almost back to New York?" asked Kylo. 

"We're scheduled to land at 8am," Poe said. "Deboarding, or whatever they call it on boats, starts at 9am." 

"Goddammit," said Kylo. 

"Glad someone started enjoying this cruise," said Poe. "Hey, look at it this way. If you owe her a car, it'll give you a chance to see her again?" 

Kylo stood bolt upright, the motion sending a sudden shooting pain into his head. "I need her number," he said, and without another word ran past Poe. "Rey!" he shouted, almost slipping on the wet, dark tile. "Rey!"

She was almost to the women's locker room, towel wrapped around her shoulders. She stopped and turned. "Yes?" 

"I need your phone number," Kylo said. 

"Are you trying to make this more than a vacation fling?" she asked. 

"Number one, we have not flung to anyone's definition of fling," said Kylo, "and number two, I will need to contact you if you are serious about claiming your winnings." 

She gave him an unreadable look. "Give me a minute," she said, and went into the locker room. Luckily there was another station of coconut water next to the locker room. He poured another cup. 

"Kylo," she said, emerging, and he looked up. She was wearing the fluffy bathrobe again, and holding a small bag. She took a notebook out of the bag, then hesitated. 

"I don't have an American sim card yet," she said. "How about you give me your number, and I'll text when I get one?" 

Kylo gave her a long look. "I'm trusting you to contact me," he said, taking the notebook out of her hands. 

"I'll think about it," she said. He wrote down his number. She took the notebook back and closed it, pushed it back into her bag. 

"If I don't see you," she said, then paused. 

"Well," he said. 

"Well," she said. 

"All you have to do is text me," he said. 

"Will it be the same?" she asked, looking up into his face. Her eyes seemed very large. "Could it ever be the same, outside of you and me and the wine-dark sea?" 

"Don't forget the spring breaker coeds," said Kylo. "Or the terrible soup."

Rey laughed. "How could I," she said. 

"Just text me," he said. 

"I'll consider it," she said. 

"I won't say goodbye," Kylo said, as she started to walk away. "Since you're just going to text me as soon as you get a sim tomorrow." 

"Still considering it," she said, walking back toward the entrance. 

"I'll have my phone on loud," he said, and the last thing he saw of her before she turned the corner was that secret smile. 

\---

The next morning Kylo wasn't ready by 8. He wasn't ready by 9. Finn came into his room and forced him to start putting clothes in a bag. "You're not gonna find her in this room," he pointed out, and begrudgingly Kylo packed, shoving his things back into their various containers. From the backpack pocket he pulled out the cell phone he hadn't used in a week. 

"I do not want to turn this on," he said, holding it at arms' length. "I don't want to read my email. I don't want to know what I missed."

"You're telling me," said Poe, from the door, leaning on his suitcase. "14 days without checking my email? Let that continue forever." 

Finn, possibly the only person alive who actually kept on top of his inbox, rolled his eyes. 

"You don't understand," said Poe, whose filing system was 'skim and see if it has any important words in the subject line'. "You and your tags and labels. You've never lost an email in your life, Finn." 

"I haven't ever taken 14 days off," said Kylo, still holding out his cell phone distastefully. 

"Did you tell your mother you were going on a cruise?" Finn asked. 

Kylo snorted. "I often go months without speaking to my mother," he said. "Why would I alert her I'm gone for 14 days?" 

"Well, this is technically American soil," said Poe, bending down to look out through the port hole. "I bet you have service." 

"Back in the 212," said Kylo, sighing, and pressed the power button. 

The three disembarked. 

He did not see Rey. 

 

\--- 

 

One day went by. 

Two days went by. 

Kylo did, as promised, keep his phone on loud. There was, as predicted, a flurry of missed calls, a snowstorm of missed texts, and a blizzard of emails, each one bearing some task that required something out of him. Vacation was supposed to be rejuvenating, was it? Why did the tasks feel more draining than they ever had before? 

He worked through the weekend, and into the night, late, holing up in the lab long after even the weekend day people had left, combing through reports and results, double-checking the latest quotes, sending off emails to contractors at 1 in the morning. He went to the gym when he woke up at 4am on Saturday, too early for even dedicated gym rats, lifting things until his whole body hurt. Every small phone chime was an instant rise and fall of his spirits. 

"This is so stupid," he muttered, after waking Sunday morning up for the sixth time to what turned out to be another email notification. "I can't live like this." He rolled over. "What is wrong with me. I need to booty call someone."

But he couldn't, not when she might still be in the city. How long was she going to be in New York? Why didn't he ask her that? 

The text did come, at 5:45am on Sunday. 

**You know who**

He didn't care if it was before 6am. He didn't care that he was breaking his own rule of _never text a woman before 11am._

**American phone at last?**

**And a fancy New York number, too. You'll never know me.**

**Staying in New York long?**

**No, actually. I need to drive to San Francisco by next week. I thought instead of renting a car...**

**You have an international drivers' license, I assume? Or are you getting a New York license?**

**And parallel park here? Re-sit for a driver's test? American barbarism. I have an IDP, thanks.**

**Insurance?**

**Are you trying to talk me through the steps of what I need to get a car?**

**I wouldn't give away this car to just anyone, you know. Just wanted to make sure you have the paperwork.**

**Oh, I have the paperwork.**

**When can you meet?**

**Monday morning okay? 8am?**

**Yeah, no problem. Coffee after?**

**Timing it so I can get on the road. Got some wrong-side driving to get used to, after all.**

He texted her the address. She didn't respond, but she didn't have to. The foolish girl left read receipts on. 

\----

He'd been up since sunrise, pacing his apartment. She finally texted him just after 8am, saying

**Hey, I'm here**

And all the space in his apartment seemed like it wasn't enough.

Kylo took the elevator to the first floor. He had purposefully avoided waiting on the first floor, first of all because it was just an empty administrative lobby, and second of all because he couldn't take the supense. When the elevator doors opened he saw her, through the glass doors, across the marbled expanse of the lobby, wearing a pale dress, carrying a small bag. Her hair was down. 

Kylo waved his passcard at the doors and they clicked open. He stepped outside, into the sweltering heat. He hated summer and spent most time lurking inside. She looked radiant, warm and vibrant, somehow not sweating in that unforgiving pale dress. 

"I can't believe it," he said, and she turned towards him. Rey smiled. 

"Yes, Virginia," she said. 

"That joke is like, eighty years old," Kylo said. "And American. How do you know all this random stuff?" 

"I come visit you in New York and you insult my jokes," Rey said. 

"Come visit me in the air conditioning," Kylo said, holding the door for her. She reached beside her and he noticed a suitcase next to her on the sidewalk, with a backpack perched atop it. They stepped inside and the door closed with a click behind them. 

"Brought all your luggage too?" Kylo asked. He went to pick up the luggage, but Rey held up a hand. 

"Oh, no, it rolls so well just how I have it," she said. "I wasn't joking when I said I was leaving directly. It's a long drive and I've got to be in California next week." 

"What have you been doing in New York? You should have asked me, you know. You don't have to live like a tourist when you have a local to show you around."

"Oh, I didn't do much touring," said Rey, following Kylo across to the elevators. "Mostly a lot of paperwork. Tours of bureaucratic offices, which don't tend to provide one with much variety." 

"Not a single fun thing?" Kylo turned towards her. "Do you want to? Breakfast? Coffee? The food will be better than last time, I promise." 

Rey smiled. "Will you provide me with a pool to do my daily swim, too?" she teased. 

"Would you like the rooftop infinity pool, or the olympic pool on the 36th floor without a view?" he asked. 

"Oh no," she said. "I was counting on you not having any pools. Foolish of me, I suppose." 

"If you'd like to recreate our last breakfast, I'd love to watch you swim and then feed you," Kylo said, and watched her ears turn red. 

"No, I need to go," she said. "It really is such a long drive."

They boarded the elevator and he pressed a button for a garage floor, then took a key from his pocket and inserted it into the lock beside the button and turned it. The button lit up and the elevator began to rise. 

"Secret garage?" she asked. 

"Oh, a lot of company cars," Kylo said. "And some of mine." 

"Oh, just some of your cars," she said, her face carefully neutral. "That's quite normal, I'm sure." 

"Well it'd be very irresponsible of me to gamble away my only car," he said, as the elevator doors opened. 

"I thought you didn't even need a car living here--" she started to say, but then caught sight of the garage behind Kylo, and her eyes widened. "Holy hell," she whispered. 

The room was full of old cars, each one polished to perfection. "Who did you kill to get all this," she said, walking out into the garage. "A GT 40? Is that an original Viper? A 71 GSX? Is that--how many 250 GTs are in this room? An F1? Jesus," she breathed, and abandoned her luggage to start inspecting a grey coupe closest to them. 

Kylo, who was mostly indifferent to cars and who had, in fact, inherited them all from his father, shrugged. He watched her open doors, checking out dashboards, and lift hoods to examine engines. 

"Do you want a key to the garage?" he asked her, after she had wandered six cars down the floor. "You can come drive them, if you want." 

Rey straightened up and stared at him. "You," she said, and then stopped, as if she weren't sure how to finish the sentiment. 

"My father," he said. "And his best friend-slash-enemy. They loved to gamble, too. They often gambled for cars." 

"Must be where you get it from," she said. "Usually people don't offer up old Corvettes in a poker game." She cast a longing eye down the rows of cars, but started walking back towards her luggage. "Sorry, I got side tracked."

"Oh, don't apologize," Kylo said. 

"I'm sure you'll be late for work," she said. 

"If you said the word, I'd skip work," he said. "We could drive anything, go out to the beach. I'd even let you drive," he said, raising an eyebrow, "but only if you said please."

"You," she said, again, her tone unreadable. She reached down to her luggage, looking down, not meeting his eyes. "Okay," she said, "let's go see this car you promised me and what state of disrepair it's in."

"I'm insulted you think I would keep a car in disrepair," said Kylo, as they walked toward the end of the garage. Her eyes kept lingering on the cars. 

"Yes, none of these are," she said, turning to him. "But Corvettes can be notoriously finicky, you know." 

"I don't, actually," he said. "I just drive them."

"Well, usually, I just work on them," she said, then fell silent as they came into sight of the car, parked at the end of a row, near the windows. The corvette was parked near the corner of the building, where large glass windows let sunlight in. Sunlight fell over the curved lines of the body, giving it haloed edges. It seemed radiant in the morning light. 

"I had it cleaned," he said. "Oh, you'll need these." 

He opened the door of the car and pulled out a manila envelope and the keys, turned and handed them to her. She opened the manila envelope, checked the title. Inside the envelope was a $50 bill. 

"Bribe?" she asked, holding it up. 

"That's the New York DMV registration fee," he said. "You'll have to, unfortunately, stop by the DMV on the way out of the city, if you actually want to have it in your name." 

"Another office," she said, but she was smiling. "And here I thought you wanted to take me on a tour of the non-bureaucratic parts of the city."

"I want to take you everywhere," Kylo said. "You're the one who's extremely set on driving a thousand miles away from me as soon as possible, after all." 

She laughed. "So forlorn!" she said, unrepentant. "Here, help me with the luggage," and reached inside to pop the trunk. Kylo lifted her suitcase into the trunk while she put her backpack in the front passenger seat. 

She shut the door and turned to face him. Her face was radiant in the sunlight. 

"I just still have a lot of questions," Kylo began. "We're not on the boat anymore, right, so I can ask that? Why do you work on cars? What are you doing in San Francisco? When can I see you--"

And then he found himself unable to ask any more questions, because Rey was kissing him, raising one hand to his head, and then he was reaching for her and wrapping his arms around her, and then she had both hands in his hair, and he was kissing her and kissing her and could feel the sunlight in his hair and on his arms and taste her lips on his tongue and feel the beat of her heart against his chest, and she was taking small breaths against his mouth so she could keep kissing him, and he didn't want to stop, and didn't want to ask any more questions. 

"So did we both win, then?" she asked, pulling away from him softly, and he kissed her one more time. 

"Don't go to San Francisco," he said, as she gently detangled herself from him. 

"You," she said, again, moving her body away from him. "You may be able to skip work, Kylo Ren, but I have a brand new job I have to go to." 

He opened the car door for her. "Follow the signs to exit the garage," he said, unnecessarily, and she rolled her eyes. "Even if I'd rather you didn't. Please don't die driving across the country, also, people are terrible drivers in America." 

"Oh, I'm a very good driver," she said, putting the keys in the ignition. 

"Text me?" he said. 

"I'll consider it," she said. 

"Where are you going in San Francisco?" he asked, as she shut the car door. She rolled down the window, and a small smile played on her face. 

"Oh, just a little startup out there," she said. "Skywalker Laboratories. Don't wait up for me," she said, and then shifted gears, and then she was driving away, around the corner and down the ramp and out of sight. 

Kylo stood in the square of sunlight, his mouth still warm from the kiss, and said: "Skywalker Laboratories? Mother _fucker_ \--"

Fin

**Author's Note:**

>   * I do not know anything about Star Wars, which is one of the most disordered major canons in the universe. It's messy space dystopia. I'm a Star Trek fan, dammit. Don't ask me anything about canon because I literally do not know it. 
>   * I, like some of you, just watched The Last Jedi in theatres & said "oh, this is just fanfiction" and texted my best friend that exact phrase 
>   * One year later, she watched it on Netflix and then became The Biggest Star Wars Fan In The World 
>   * She sent me a list of AUs including: a Manhattan project AU, 1 person is a contractor roofer and the other is the aggravated neighbor awakened at some ungodly hour by hammering AU, mortal enemies locked in eternal combat AU, trapped on long international flight and one person is scared of planes AU, we both decided to go on this singles cruise with our friends and now our friends have hooked up do you want to go to the buffet together AU 
>   * and I went for....the singles cruise AU? why 
>   * it really just became millennial!AU 
>   * I don't even actually like cruises 
>   * If you wanna hear our fan theories about Jedi being an obscure Vulcan religion, and Kylo being half human & seduced by emotion, & Romulan-Sith invading & corrupting the Federation/Galactic Order.........don't wait up 
>   * this fic is extremely loosely based off one of my favorite not-good old movies, _An Affair To Remember_ , where Cary Grant has charming chemistry with Deborah Kerr on a cruise and the moral of the story is look both ways before crossing the street 
>   * also slightly inspired by my love of kdramas, where every male protagonist has a large garage in Seoul full of fancy cars. hmu if you want kdrama recs. not if you want to know anything about star wars. 
>   * I just want more fics where everyone is bros 
>   * Thanks for coming to my TED talk 
>   * Thanks for reading I individually appreciate all of you 
> 



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